Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Long lost

Friday, January 23, 2009

The Olympic Bet Conclusion

And so the back log clean out begins. First things first: The Olympic Bet conclusion. I’m still gingerly easing myself back into this whole blogging thing, so you’ll have to excuse the quality of writing – especially when I drop in and out of past and present tense like a crack addict in a time machine. Spell check keeps giving me grief as well, telling me I have a lot of fragmented sentences. LOL WUT!? STFU Microsoft Word.

Taking into account my gracious handicap, I lost the bet by 21 Medals. Fuck.

Australia didn’t produce the riches I had hoped they would. Meanwhile Britain provided their best effort in 100 years. I should really commend them on their efforts, but I won’t. Because I’m a prick.

Well, whatever. It was time to pay up.

The Payment :

The original wager was made at the Clapham High Street Revolution Vodka Bar, so in keeping with tradition we decided the payment should be made at a similar bar (this time at Clapham Junction Revolution, welcome to London and it’s infestation of chain bars), which we did on the Thursday after the Beijing Olympics come to its (some what gaudy) conclusion. Although a work night, it was also the last time I would be seeing Buzz for quite some time, as we were both busy up until my London departure. Rest assured the gloves were off drinking wise.

I pulled out the winning 20 quid note. It went from my hand, to Buzz’s hand, to the bartender’s hand and was transformed into two wooden racks of six shots each in roughly the amount of time it takes me to mouth the words “Oh shit, here we go again”.

This was only the tip of the iceberg, as multiple Vodka racks were rounded up. Arctic Mint shots, bubblegum flavoured shots, Chilli shots – and I kid you fucking not –Porridge shots. Yellow shots, Green shots, Purple shots – all alcoholic, and most a sickly sweet flavour. After several hours of this you feel like you’ve been tied to the ground spread eagled, as Rainbow Brite sticks two fingers down her own throat and then vomits all over your face.

Several hours of reckless consumption later we stumbled out into Clapham Junction. It was 11pm on a work night so there was only one thing we could really do at this point – hit the Grand night club across the road.

Next up was a few more vodkas (not that we needed them), followed by a few Jagermeisters with a group of girls we had just met. Next thing I know, we’re tearing up the dance floor like maniacs. Anybody who knows me will vouch for the fact that I fucking LOATH dancing. So if you see me out on the dance floor making some shapes, you know it is a sure sign of the Apocalypse. That or I have a skinful of Porridge Vodka.

We were at the Grand for about four hours, give or take. My time spent there is quite a blur, as my brain decided that these weren’t “Kodak moments” and proceeded to disallow any of the action to remain permanently in my memory banks.

Next thing I know its 3am and we are getting gently shuffled out the door by the bouncers. Buzz and I headed down to the local kebab shop, to indulge in some of that infamous cuisine you would never dare consume sober.

While ordering my kebab, I slip the bemused chef an extra fiver like I’m trying to skip the line at a New York night club and whisper “Give us some extra jalapeños, would you boss?”.

If you were ever wondering how many jalapeños five British Pounds will get you at a Kebab shop, the answer is actually quite simple - All of them.

The chef literally emptied his container of peppers onto my kebab, producing a fiery green mound the size of a dead Hooker’s skull. For reasons I couldn’t tell you now, I ate all of the jalapeños and then threw the untouched kebab in the bin.

Post-kebab fest Buzz and I shook hands and parted ways, like two Spartan warriors that had just slaughtered a herd of Pandas on their day off. I hopped into a cab, and made my way home; trying my hardest to keep up my end of the civil conversation I had somehow ended up in with the surprisingly chatty cab driver.

I got home in one piece and flaked out in spectacular fashion, drifting off into that feverish coma reserved only for piss heads and Malaria sufferers.

The Day After :

I woke the next day, fully dressed (shoes and all) with my bedroom light still on, and made a bee-line for the toilet.

I wept like a frightened child through the punitive morning after dump, wondering want on earth had possessed me to eat an entire bucket of jalapeños. I looked out the bathroom window to find the Sun peculiarly high for an early London morn. Had I slept through my alarm? A quick check of my phone’s clock would have the answer:

1:45pm

That would explain why the sun was higher than I thought it should be. It would also explain the 14 missed calls on my phone, which will kinda happen when you’re five hours late for work. I cursed Vodka, jalapeños, Buzz, the Olympics and Dakota Fanning (no reason, I just dislike her) and wondered what I was going to do.

The thought of racing off to work caused my head ache to throb just a little harder, so I put my phone back in my pocket, loudly declaring to nobody in particular ”I am El Ganso the Demon God of Jalapeños! No office can cage me!”.

Then I called in sick and went back to bed.

In reality my official resignation had been sitting in the HR file for almost a month by this point, and I was grinding through my final week of work. The space station “Stress” had finally caved into the Black hole of apathy, and on this particular afternoon I had my usual weekday choice to make: go back to bed and sleep off a hangover, or go into work to face pointless conference calls and mountains of idiotic emails. Traditionally I would succumb to the call of work. Not this day kids.

Bed won. Flawless Victory.

As I drifted off back to sleep I chuckled at the spastic chain of events one simple wager had led to, and though I lost the bet by a spectacular amount, it was certainly not an act I regretted.

As I pointed out in my World Cup post way back when, chucking a few quid on the outcome of an event can greatly increase the enjoyment of watching said event. It’s an especially useful tool if you’re going to be watching teams you have no emotional investment in, or even if the actual sporting event itself doesn’t really float your boat.

And such was the case with the Olympics: I was elated at every medal Australia got their hands onto, and winced every time the Brits got one themselves; and generally paid a lot of attention to an event that I, to be perfectly honest, traditionally don’t give a fuck about.

And now 2009 is upon us, and with it a whole new calendar of sporting events I can place poorly thought out wagers on. I’ll keep you posted kids.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

2009? Six years until flying cars and counting.

I only had one New Year’s resolution for 2009, and that was to get a post up on the Shoddy Blog. And right here before your disbelieving eyes is said update, so it’s smooth sailing for me now until December 31st. My resolution for 2010 will be to dress up like a Wizard and piss on a stray cat (but that’s just pencilled in, hopefully I can come up with something a little more productive by the end of the year).

It’s been almost four months since my last full post, and so I had grand plans to make this welcome back post an all singing all dancing affair. But I seriously doubt you could be fucked reading it, which works out for both of us, because I seriously can’t be fucked writing it.

You know how it is with writing these blogs anyway – you sculpt this beautiful essay in your head while you’re waiting for the bus, or strolling through a supermarket; but lo and behold when you finally sit down at the keyboard, you’re brain feels like it is filled with fog.

And so I will now attempt to cram a lot of information into a handful of paragraphs, but don’t fret, as I will return to the major plot points in posts later this month.

Anyway, I had a hectic couple of months after my last post (which was August 20th). In short: I lost the Olympic bet, went to a Serbian Beer festival, moved out of my Clapham Junction flat, got up at 6am to watch the Adelaide Crows crash out of the finals, celebrated my 31st birthday, Postponed a trip to Edinburgh because a work-mate went to prison, went to a Buck’s party in Cornwall, quit my job, went bar hopping in Madrid, spent a weekend at a birthday party in a country house in Wales, finally did the Edinburgh trip, left London for good, stopped over for 10 days in Malaysia and then finally landed back here in Adelaide on the 18th of October.

Like I said, a lot to gloss over – but I will be addressing many of these events in future posts, after all I know have the spare time to write again (I would have posted sooner, but I’ve been pretty effin’ busy since I got back to Australia. Two weddings, organising a job, catching up with friends and family, the whole Christmas thing, etc... also, sorting out my old-ass computer and a working ADSL line took a lot fucking longer than I thought it would).

And so we begin 2009, and Christ almighty will it be different to 2008.

For some reason, New Year’s Eve always makes me strangely optimistic about starting a new phase in my life. In fact, I know a lot of people who do this - divide their life up by Calender years, and think of January first as the start of a new chapter. But it’s rare for any of life’s major occurrences (either good or bad) to work out that way. Major life turning points usually occur on a lazy Wednesday in the middle of April, or kick you in the nuts on a frosty August morn.

That being said, I once met a guy* who said he was fired on December 31st, and went on to meet the love of his life at the New Year’s Eve party on that very same day. So who knows?

All I know is that 2009 will provide a much more productive output here at the Shoddy Blog. I’ve gone from having no spare time, to all the fuckin’ time in the world – so I’m gearing up to clear out my massive back-log of drafts (including some really, really old shit). Prepare yourself for some truly irrelevant reading.

Happy New Year, kids.

* I’m lying, I never met a guy like that, it just seemed a romantic way to conclude the post. I did once met a guy who got a squid-jag stuck up his nose and had to have it surgically removed, but that didn’t seem relevant at this time.